Easy to dismiss as a smut peddler, misogynist and pre-Internet troll (all of which he was), but I think he's also a really interesting and complicated dude.
Easy to dismiss as a smut peddler, misogynist and pre-Internet troll (all of which he was), but I think he's also a really interesting and complicated dude.
In 1983, Hustler ran a fake ad featuring televangelist Jerry Falwell, in which he said he'd lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. "And they had to kick the goat out first. I mean, it was clearly a satire," he chuckled to Larry King in an interview in 1996, as they discussed Falwell suing him for invasion of privacy, libel and intentional inflection of emotional distress. The case went to the Supreme Court. In a landmark unanimous decision, the court ruled Flynt's satire was protected by the First Amendment. The publisher was lionized in the 1996 movie The People vs. Larry Flynt. Actor Woody Harrelson got an Oscar nomination playing a lovable rascal fighting even with his lawyer.
Easy to dismiss as a smut peddler, misogynist and pre-Internet troll (all of which he was), but I think he's also a really interesting and complicated dude.